The suspected ringleader of the Al Qaeda car bombers is a brilliant neurologist working for the NHS.

Saudi Mohammed Asha, 26, was arrested with his 27-year-old wife, who was in traditional Muslim dress, on the M6 in Cheshire on Saturday night, according to London’s Daily Mail.

A Jordanian official said British authorities had contacted the Jordanian Embassy in London to say Asha, who reportedly worked at a hospital in central England, was a possible suspect.

In Jordan, Asha’s brother Ahmed told The Associated Press he had heard the media reports and said his sibling “is not a Muslim extremist, and he’s not a fanatic.” Asha is currently being questioned by authorities.

Doctors from Iraq and Jordan were among the seven suspects arrested in the failed car bombings in London and at Glasgow’s airport, officials said Monday.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said at least 19 locations were searched as part of the “fast-moving investigation.”

Vigilance was already high less than a week before the anniversary of the deadly July 7, 2005, London transit bombing. Those were largely carried out by local Muslims, exacerbating ethnic tensions in Britain.

In the latest attacks, two car bombs failed to explode in central London on Friday and two men rammed a Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas cylinders into the entrance of Glasgow International Airport on Saturday.

The unidentified driver of the Jeep, which burst into flames, is being treated for serious burns at Paisley’s Royal Alexandra Hospital in Glasgow, where he is under arrest by armed police and where the Iraqi doctor reportedly worked. A 27-year-old man also was arrested at the airport and was being held at a high-security police station in Glasgow.

According to the British General Medical Council’s register, a man named Bilal Talal Abdul Samad Abdulla was registered in 2004 and trained in Baghdad. Staff at Royal Alexandra Hospital said one suspect was a doctor of Middle Eastern or Iraqi origin who worked there. A third man, arrested in Liverpool, was also reported to be an Indian doctor who works at Halton Hospital in Cheshire.

Daniel Gardiner, a rental agent whose company leased a Glasgow-area home searched by police, said authorities contacted his firm 10 minutes before the airport attack, saying they had tracked phone records from it linked to the foiled London car bomb attacks.

“A card was put through one of my colleague’s door, asking if we would contact them,” he said.

“A couple of hours later, they (police) came back to us with a name, and we were able to trace their records,” he said. “The police wanted to know why we had dialed a certain phone number. They had the phone records from the situation down in London.”

Ian Thomson, who lives on the quiet suburban street, said the people who lived in the house kept irregular hours: “I would see at least one of them with a stethoscope and just assumed they were doctors working shifts.”

Gardiner said his tenant – the only person listed as living in the house – was thought to be a doctor at the Royal Alexandra Hospital. A controlled explosion was carried out Sunday on a car left at the hospital that police said was linked to the airport attack.

A British government security official said a loose U.K.-wide network appeared to be behind the London and Glasgow attacks, but investigators were struggling to pin down suspects’ identities.

Security in London was highly visible Monday morning, with long lines of cars forming behind police checkpoints on London Bridge. Concrete slabs were in place protecting the Wimbledon tennis tournament.

In a statement to the House of Commons, Smith urged Britons to remain united.

“Let us be clear: terrorists are criminals, whose victims come from all walks of life, communities and religious backgrounds,” she said. “Terrorists attack the values that are shared by all law-abiding citizens.

“It is through our unity that the terrorists will eventually be defeated.”

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Associated Press reporters Ben McConville in Glasgow and Shafika Mattar and Jamal Halaby in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.